AI · Ventures
How to write a business plan with AI
Ask for the outline, fill it in part by part with your real data and use AI as a critic. A good plan is one you understand and can defend.
bairogonzalez.com team, drawing on Bairo's story · Published
You can write a business plan with artificial intelligence in a few days instead of weeks, as long as you follow an order: first the outline, then each part with your real data, then the critique. AI organizes, suggests questions, builds tables and revises the text. But the numbers, the conversations with customers and the choices have to come from you. A whole plan generated at once, with made-up data, looks pretty and doesn't survive the first question from a bank, a partner or an investor.
The goal of the plan isn't to impress. It's to force you to think before you spend.
Why AI is not a chatbot
A business plan calls for reasoning, not a ready-made answer. That's why AI delivers a lot when you treat it as a work partner that asks, challenges and rewrites, and delivers little when you expect it to "write the plan."
In Bairo's view, AI is an extension of your mind. He sums it up this way: "artificial intelligence is an extension of the human, not the problem." In a business plan, that means the tool expands your ability to organize what you know. What you don't know, it doesn't know for you.
Step by step today
- Ask for the outline that fits your case. A plan to apply for credit is different from a plan to get yourself organized:
I'm going to open [type of business] in [city], with [amount] of capital.
The plan is to [get organized / present to a partner / apply for credit].
Put together the outline of a simple business plan for that goal,
with one line explaining what goes in each part.
- Fill in one part at a time, interview-style. For each item in the outline, ask the AI to ask you questions:
Let's write the "[name of the part]" section. Ask me the necessary
questions, one at a time. After I've answered them all,
write the text for that part using only what I said.
- Build the numbers in a spreadsheet of your own. Ask the AI to explain how to structure it: initial investment, fixed costs, variable costs, price, projected sales in three scenarios (pessimistic, likely, optimistic) and the break-even point. Type the numbers yourself and check the formulas.
- Research the market in real sources. AI can suggest where to look (IBGE, Sebrae, industry associations, city hall), but the data must come from those sources, with a date. If it brings a number with no source, discard it.
- Ask for merciless criticism:
Play the part of an experienced credit analyst who is going to read this
plan. List the 7 hardest questions you would ask me and the
points where the plan seems too optimistic.
- Answer the criticism and rewrite. This is the part that transforms the plan. Many people discover here that they need to test before investing.
- Write the one-page summary. Once everything is ready:
Summarize this plan on one page: the problem, the solution, the customer,
how much I need, when the business pays for itself and the 3 biggest risks.
Simple language, no exaggerated adjectives.
- Read it aloud. If any sentence doesn't sound like you or you can't explain it, rewrite it. In the conversation with whoever reads the plan, you'll be on your own.
How Bairo did it
Bairo Leandro Gonzalez Martinez says he didn't start with a pretty plan. He started with an image: the best version of himself he says he saw in a moment of faith, when he had no money and no apparent way out. Then, without knowing how to code, he spent six months at home, in front of the computer, turning that image into structure.
Out of those months came the foundation of the platform and the artificial intelligence of CEASA Bank, a financial platform for agribusiness. When he went looking for connections, he was told it wasn't possible, and the banks refused to integrate the solution. He rewrote the plan around building his own technology, leaving the regulated part to those authorized to operate it: artificial intelligence, financial messaging under the ISO 20022 standard, blockchain and tokenization of real-world assets. For him, every plan that survives a no comes out stronger.
Precautions
The plan is yours, and so is the responsibility: don't send the AI partners' personal data, confidential contracts or full bank statements; check every number and every law with an official source and an accountant; don't present the AI's projections as a guarantee to anyone; ask a lawyer to read anything involving partnerships and contracts; and notice whether the tool is optimistic or pessimistic by default, because it has biases too.